Starmer is solution to pay crisis

We understand why 300,000 nurses look to Keir Starmer for support as they agonise over going on strike. After giving their all in the war against Covid and getting an insulting 4.5% pay offer as their reward for it, they are at the end of their tether.

It was Labour which created the NHS, and the party exists to ensure fairness and justice for working people.

The Tories may have clapped their hands for nurses during the pandemic, but when it comes to decent pay, they use their feet to kick them in the teeth.

Nurses are now demanding a 5% rise above inflation to make up for the 6% they have lost over the last 10 years of Tory rule.

The last thing they want to do is neglect patients, but now feel that industrial action is the only weapon left in their arsenal to fight government intransigence.

If Liz Truss and her new Health Secretary Therese Coffey want to avoid yet another crisis, they would sit down at the table with the nurses unions for talks.

We also accept that it is difficult for Keir Starmer, as PM-in-waiting, to back strikes he may one day have to resolve.

And if the polls are anything to go by, he will not be waiting much longer.

The PM is imploding before our eyes, despite making the screeching U-turns this newspaper has demanded of her.

We said she must introduce an energy price freeze and she has.

We said she must abandon crazy plans to give tax breaks to millionaires and she did.

Now Tory MPs tell us they would rather bring her down and cause a General Election than vote for her heartless benefit cuts.

That would bring Mr Starmer within a heartbeat of putting Labour’s plan for economic growth and the prosperity that will come with it into action.

It is the only credible answer to Britain’s woes – and the best way to end the Tory cycle of low pay and industrial strife.

Put Keir Starmer in the No10 hotseat and then truly meaningful pay negotiations with our nurses can begin.